Rare Chaucer MS discovered

News flash!

Author’s unauthorized spy photo of lost ms page.

25 March. San Mateo, CA: Stunning results of the 2012 Bradford Expedition, once thought lost forever on the London underground (see map), shock Chaucer scholars: the discovery of an unknown manuscript by Chaucer, kept secret by a cabal of British scholars locked in a fierce debate about attribution!

Mr. Robert Bradford, under the guise of “visiting scholar,” was unable to actually handle the document, but thanks to American (Japanese? Chinese? Korean? Finnish? Canadian?) ingenuity, using his tiny digital camera hidden in his Herbert Johnson designed hat, Mr. Bradford was able to record the document, page by page, as he looked over the shoulders of the scholars. And now he shares his find with us,—that is, Coastline Journal and Dominican University of California, who proudly present….

Ah, but before we do…you should develop an ear for how to read Chaucer. Harvard can teach you. And watch this video, watch and listen.

Chaucer’s Lost Canterbury Tale

Robert F. Bradford has won two Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards for Best Play in the Fringe of Marin Festival of One-Acts, and his plays have also been produced by Construct Theatre Company on W. 14th St. in New York, the Black Box Festival at College of Marin in Kentfield, CA, the Petaluma Arts Council (CA), Ross Valley Players (CA) and Café Amsterdam in Fairfax, CA, and published in Mused (Bella Online). His stories have been published in Bohème Magazine, SoMa Literary Review, Slow Trains Literary Journal and Long Story Short. He holds a Master of Arts in Humanities with a Writing Concentration (2006) from Dominican University of California, where he is now an Adjunct Instructor in the Literature & Languages and the Humanities & Cultural Studies Departments.

On the first of April, 2012, workmen repairing an interior wall of Westminster Abbey discovered an ancient manuscript, which they dutifully delivered to a conclave of scholars at the library of the British Museum, where its authenticity was hotly debated.

As a visiting scholar, I was kept very much on the edges of that debate; as a technophile with a palm-sized digital camera, I was able to surreptitiously photocopy the pages as they were carefully laid out on an old oaken table; as a democratic egalitarian American, I was strongly opposed to the scholars’ resolve to keep the manuscript from the public eye while it was interminably assayed.

Therefore, it behooves me to disseminate, for the world at large to relish and to judge, these lines of what I believe to be Chaucer’s Lost (or, more properly, Hidden) Canterbury Tale, with my own rough translation interlined.

Chaucer’s Lost Tale – an Afterword

When struck by any piece of literature, music, painting – indeed, any art – my first impulse is not to write an essay, but to think, “How is this done? I want to do this!” Thus, when studying Chaucer under the redoubtable and beloved Sister Aaron Winkelman, last of the great teaching nuns at Dominican University of California, I resolved to avoid a standard “lit crit” essay by crafting this faux “Lost Tale.”

Writing iambic pentameter is easy enough – it’s still the standard rhythm of our everyday speech. To get a handle on Middle English, I made notes, as I studied, of useful words and, more importantly, created my own Middle English rhyming dictionary, starting with the conventional rhymes that Chaucer uses over and over, and adding all the quirky bits that might come in handy.

As for the story itself, I always find myself wishing to see more of Chaucer himself as a character in the prologues, and more historical context, such as his close ties with the royal family, and the turmoil of the recent Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, which was all I needed to get me started.

When Sister Aaron said she read it TWICE – and that I had Chaucer inventing the historical novel — and gave me what was, from her, a very rare “A” for the course, it was the highlight of my career as a scholar.

— Robert F. Bradford

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NOTES:

[1] In the sign of Libra, the Scales, i.e., end of September and first three weeks of October.

[2] The Feast Day of the Body of Christ, Thursday, June 13, 1381.

[3] Prince John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was the third son of King Edward III, the uncle of King Richard II, and the father of the usurper King Henry IV. He was Chaucer’s great patron. Chaucer’s wife’s sister was first Lancaster’s mistress, then his wife. Some scholars speculate that Chaucer’s wife was also Lancaster’s mistress.

[4] Chaucer’s father was a London wine merchant, well-connected enough to place young Geoffrey in the royal household as a page.

[5] Chaucer was for twelve years appointed Controller of the Wool Custom by the king.